In a strong marriage, a long marriage
much cannot be said, should not be said.
The spots on one's skin will be wisely ignored.
Differences of opinion are tolerated, not debated.

Your memories may disappoint your partner
as not those she has selected, refracted.
Over dinner for two at the Mill on the Floss
it could be dangerous to compare wills, losses.

Or it might result in belly laughs, Shakespearean
revelations, the night he got us lost in the woods
or she peed her pants at a party. The marriage was Faustian,
in a good way, like going to a job in the Garden of Eden.

Having survived 25 years, knowing 50's impossible,
what else do we know? Raised 2 boys, painted 3 houses.

Which is it: you can't get started unless
you're riding some current bigger than your reporting voice
or the best time to write is when you don't have much to say
and without plenty to say about everything you'll get better right
      away.

Form is very often a betrayal of reality.
Although we are initially drawn to poems by their passion and
      urgency,
we are convinced by the formal means invented
for their impelling motives. Every accidental crack or dent.


Not just mildly disquieted but actively repelled,
running for the River Styx, the doors of Hell pell mell,
there must be a crack, deep and unmendable, in the poet
that the poet must forever try to mend. Or not.

While mortal poets imitate, immortal poets steal.
That's plagiarism. Fortunately the public feels
less strongly about poetry than television,
communism and aging gracefully through meditation.

Now I'm being silly. My silly indefatigable lusting,
silly sadness, silly arguing and silly trusting.
All I do not know about our nation's history, wars
and what showering the people you love with love does.

Ransacking apothegms, algorithms
and selling the loot as memes,
dissemblings. Bearing fardels
with the warrior's skull.

Working over Birk’s Works and other tunes my saxophonist admires—
Cheesecake, Blackbird—for the theoretical, applied mathematics
inside an abstract, audial harmonization of the Big Bang and The Fall.

The derivative reveals the ***** of the tangent along the curve of
       spacetime.
Follow that rope back and forth from the known to the unknown, your
      mountain to their shore,
an umbilical cord between cities and stories, history and hope, divinity
       and mortality

                        *                        *    ­                    *

I never had anything wise or gentle to say to my parents.
About bladder function. They got the same treatment as every other
       soldier.
Which systems shut down first and how. The mail keeps coming even
      after you’ve stopped barking.

And what is man made of? Man. Tough it out, laugh about it. Take it out
on your spouse and sons. Democracy corrects itself
through constant criticism, neurotic carping, daily life as low intensity
      warfare. That’s how we show we care.

                        *                        *        ­                *

Will my letter to the editor be in the funny pages?
Will I even be able to read it?
Did I send it to the wrong address? I’ve seen my death face and it’s not
      pretty.

Maybe I can watch your varsity games from a viewfinder in the afterlife.
If I don’t finish The Iliad, maybe there’s a library there.
Maybe. Maybe is a long, long time.

                        *                        *        ­                *

Homer tries several ways to explain the slaughter:
by describing how a spear pierces a warrior’s jawbone or armor,
how Achilles’ and Agamemnon’s hissy fits contribute to the pain of being
      a soldier

and how the gods, esp. Zeus, are passionate, confused, obtuse.
A callow youth even as a man. He was afraid and therefore could not
      comfort or help.
Perhaps he has a question he’d like to ask but isn’t sure what it is or how
      to ask it.

                        *                        *          ­              *

The hero loses urinary control.
The virtuoso loses interest in her bow.
The expert neglects to do the research.

How do cancer cells and bacteria cooperate to ****
the host (you)? The way yr mum & pop
******* up. It’s unavoidable and it’s not your fault.

Start the day. In what way
was the cold spring, last wet summer a
global warning, indicator. Says

one commentator on the op-ed page, the
dislocations, wars, famines will tax humanity's
technology, philosophy, even religion's ability

to see past daily survival to
the music in the rock. I've doubted the taboos
one frog among many in the slow-heating beauty

of the world we knew. Aaron's coconut.
Peepers peeping in the heavy rains, wet
with joy. Hawks and crows thrive below the jet

stream, noise, perhaps our fears
are overdrawn, we'll get along, it'll all hold together 10,000 years more,
the Holocaust will never be repeated, lush mountain and sere

desert equally appreciated, baseball
lazily paced summer evenings, the harvest in the fall
a sure thing, and the dying back a blessing come to all.

Negligible morsel of biomass
my fat belly, formerly abs
insignificant yet it occupies me
hourly while bored or hungry.

Fat is what? a picture
of despair, giving up caring
or man out of balance, other
side of the world's starving

mass, case of the soul's malnutrition
industrial agriculture, television
supermarkets, vacations, hydrocarbons
and the grid. Electricity, urban

traffic jams, photons at final
rest. Sugars synthesized, abundant
plastics to carry them home in.
Into your house and into your mirror.

Memorizing the periodic table
and learning the calculus makes one
no thinner. Walking the mountain
in heat and cold and rain, alone

or in fire crews should do it. And a
healthy fear of death. A laugh
a day at *** and pain and fate
which renews the biomass I hate.

Problems many of which are not getting solved
not because I'm not resolved but because I delay
to savor the day, the moon and the season
which is why I'm a non-person under the eye of eternity.

Except for my unpaid bills. And iambic pentameter.
Aaron fails English. Is there summer school?
What an *******! I want to slug him, but also
his teacher, Mr. Fisher, who's probably

a nice guy, just doing his job and raising a family.
Then there's the catheter from my last surgery
I was so sick I thought I was dying. The out of network
pathologist and radiologist have declined my insurance

and charged me to the hilt. Like I had a choice
face up in the emergency room. Facing doom, you don't ask questions.
Now that I've rejoined the living I've got to raise a million bucks
to save organic farms and endangered species I'll never see.

Perhaps none of this matters and chanting's the answer, Buddhist
      precepts,
or as Dad would say This too shall pass.
Life is a back and forth game but baseball is zen meditation,
you're in right field, nothing's happening, nothing's gonna happen,

but you can't let your attention wander for one second.
I should clean and oil my trumpet for Saturday's gig
or the valves will stick. And leave early enough
not to get stuck in traffic. Other lives, other quilts.

A guy who takes the subway to a dead metal desk
and the boss who fires him with the cold hard eyes
of one who accepts the rules entirely. Actually
we're fortunate to have rules because otherwise

child soldiers armed with AK-47s would be shooting up
the village and setting fire to our thatched roofs.
Instead, under the rule of law, when snow falls
even old roofs look like problems with proofs.

Neftlix, Hulu, autumn elaeagnus
thorns, small hairy buds, twigs hyper-lenticelled
fruits supposedly edible, leaves elongated, oblong
xerophytic but found in wetland
introduced species, some say invasive

Xbox is invasive
Hulu is the best source of foreign films
and foreign films represent reality better than American
although reality is not always what we're after
silliness, silly sadness, and relentless laughter

letting my web site go to seed
writing badly is the best revenge
eventually your doctors find something in you they can't cure
causes some fear, gives some certainty
you're required to tell your sons and brothers about it so they can make
      informed medical decisions going forward

let's posit the dead, like the dream-lover or -killer
is you in disguise, a facsimile or factotum
stand-in, an actor or actress remembering lines
which are your memories, or if you're not in movies
divinations of things to come, earthquakes and volcanoes

life goes on without a hiccup
you saddle up with the three gentlemen to the River Friday
where a new life begins without sleep as a soul, at least that's the story
      they tell
in these scientific times we apply Ockham's razor, i.e. the afterlife
will most likely be most like the life before life

when it gets too late to exercise
ignore time, learn slowly to go slowly
through life, rise
early, there is no time only change
an empty belly's holy

and a ***** willow's so alive its buds want to burst
in mid-February when the sun stays up in the sky more than January
this is what I write about, not Tolstoi, nor war
not one conversation or love scene between a man and woman
or illustration of what man has done to man

cars pass I never wave
so many guys are belly fat, women **** fat and they want to sit right
      behind you in the bleachers eating fried foods and wearing
      allergenic perfumes
I like the motionless perfection of autumn elaeagnus
wind in white pines
crows do not annoy but dogs do

a porcupine or coyote is a lucky sight
barred owl or pileated woodpecker
and a black bear is quiet reality itself
I said to the doctors 54 or 84 you always seem to want more when they
      said I'm too young to die
I said dying chooses you you don't choose dying, so it's not my fault

yesterday's walk, today's work
there's no percentage in searching for significance, wanting meaning
and no percentage in respecting death unless it's imminent
I admire the writer who writes 10,000 words per day no matter what
who's got plot

a plague or fire, a spider or a tiger in a boat
stolen Louisiana votes or endangered alligators
in my case common pipewort or pickerelweed floating in a northern
      lake
egrets, loons and hawks
on your winter walk cedar waxwings foraging for soft rose hips

and talking like people talk
about this and that, work and child rearing, not religion or politics
keeping it light and friendly
eating chili and chocolate chip cookies
passing time watching a football game, the superbowl or a movie
      usually a romantic comedy